LISTEN to BLACK MAN THINKIN’


And Then There Was…A Problem for the Parties

A picture of America’s modern presidential campaign model. Candidates seek to:

    • Segment the electorate into as many groups as practical, particularly at the state level,
    • Empathize with sympathetic groups to create the illusion of a supportive coalition,
    • Ignore conflicting interests within their coalition, speaking only of common goals,
    • Hurry to the primary/caucus before tensions in the coalition become unmanageable,
    • Repeat, in each state, adding/deleting groups as necessary to secure enough delegates,
    • Discard nationally unappealing or “extreme” groups at the convention, and
    • Craft a party message that:

      – Slights true believers,
      – Dupes fence-sitters,
      – Placates the disaffected, and
      – Appeals to voters not in the party.

Call it a “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy, a key feature of which is, no matter the general election result, the nominee has a reasonable answer for those offended by his campaign positions: “Compromise”.

Winners laud compromise positions, even dishonest ones, as a key to victory, reminding tweaked supporters that winning is more important than “getting everything our way”. Victory soothes wounded supporters with ignored interests, and winning serves to keep all party supporters in line for the next run.

Losers curse compromise positions for their defeat. Instead of cooling supporter anger, they flagellate themselves for not listening to their “base”, and pledge greater ideological purity in future campaigns if supporters will “hang in there” with them.

And, no matter which “compromise” justification they receive, voters return to their places and further segment themselves, with each group seeking golden tickets – which do not exist – for their political concerns at the next quadrennial kabuki dance.

Rinse and repeat…every four years.

“Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” trails only the National Football League in popularity, and is now so lucrative that partisan “journalists” enjoy a celebrity that eluded the Walter Cronkites and David Brinkleys, who earned respect by their unbiased – or at least less biased – reporting. It created television networks of highly paid talking heads, possessed of little to no journalistic ability or integrity, building their following and influence through with bias and air time. They, along with officeholders, candidates, and party officials work together to keep the nation divided and controlled by “conventional political wisdom”.

Consequently, parties and voters never quite align, making for increasingly dysfunctional federal governance. This creates greater political volatility, giving the talking heads more items about which to craft and apply their (in-) famous “talking points”. Government grows, individual liberties shrink, and almost everyone who helps Divide the nation, Destroy the nation, and then Cobble Together enough of the nation for an another round of division and destruction, manages to get paid.

Then the ground shifted. It began after the 2008 election.

A nation at war saw too little return on more than 7 years of blood and treasure invested abroad. Fiscal responsibility gave way to deficits, the resumption of unsustainable debt growth, and an economy in acute distress. Jobs were lost, homes foreclosed upon, and moneyed institutions that mismanaged funds received billions from the federal treasury. The nation needed a change.

And “Change” was promised, using the “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy. An unknown candidate told voters what they wanted to hear and, protectively cloaked in the historical significance of skin color, rode into the White House. Yet, this time, this president could not Cobble Together enough goodwill to compensate for the lies he did, and would, tell an already divided nation.

In its first midterm electoral opportunity, voters removed the president’s party from the majority in the House of Representatives, seeking balance. But the new majority were no more truthful than the president voters elected them to oppose; they failed to do the voters’ will. Then, in the next presidential election, “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” gave voters a presidential challenger who varied from the distrusted president in little more than complexion; it failed to produce a distinction between presidential candidates that voters saw as a difference.

In the 2014 midterm election, despite the president successfully blaming his opposition for a government shutdown a year earlier, voters gave his opposition its largest House majority since the 1920’s and a Senate majority. Still, federal governance did not change. In fact, the more numerous the voters made the president’s opposition, the less they actually opposed the president. Another “change” was needed; GOP voters had exposed, and begun to reject, the “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy.

So, enter a man who fancied himself presidential material for decades and who, in 2011, polled ahead of the eventual 2012 GOP nominee, to seek a major party nomination. The practitioners and protectors of “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” were incredulous. Among their assertions:

    Trump won’t run,
    Trump will drop out,
    Trump can only get 35% of the vote, and
    Trump can’t win the GOP nomination.

They were incorrect, and not just about the GOP race.

Before the Democrat primaries started, most gave socialist Bernie Sanders no chance to win Democrat nomination. Yet he’s won 19 of 45 primary contests, including 9 of the last 14. Now, the pundits appear befuddled about Sanders, as many Democrats reject Hillary Clinton; Democrat voters also exposed and rejected the “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” strategy.

So, what took the finger of parties and pundits off the electorate’s pulse? Simply put, voters have a different heartbeat now, and stopped accepting the candidates that parties and pundits pushed upon them. So, a longtime Democrat party member cannot easily defeat a non-Democrat, and GOP voters reject GOP 8 governors (3 current), and GOP 5 Senators (4 current) to favor a real estate developer who’s never held public office. And the change impacts more than the current nominating campaign.

Since 2009, Democrats have hemorrhaged officeholders, at the federal (net 69 House, and 13 Senate, seats lost) and state (net 9 governor’s mansions lost, net 900+ state legislative seats, and 28 legislative majorities lost) levels. The nation is purging Democrats from power, and the party’s national footprint is shrinking.

Republicans undergo a different purge – a forced leadership change. Eric Cantor became the first sitting House Majority leader to lose a primary election; John Boehner the first House Speaker to resign because his party preferred him gone. Now Boehner’s successor wears the “sellout” label for his stances on immigration, trade, and the recent budget. He opposes voters, and an increasing number of party officeholders, by not supporting Trump, even as he faces a primary challenge at home. Ryan could go the way of Cantor.

Voter rejection of “Divide, Destroy, then Cobble Together” challenges both parties. Democrats face an existential threat; they must stop the bleeding. In addition to the Obama era losses, Democrats are switching parties during the primaries: 20,000 in Massachusetts, 60,000 in Virginia, smaller numbers in other states, and 1 in 5 Democrats say they would vote Trump in November. If they cannot revise their message, and especially if they fail in November, they risk marginalization and political insignificance.

The Republican challenge is simpler: they must either find the courage to complete their ideological purge, or yield to being a right-leaning national party with left-leaning D.C. leaders. If the leadership purge fails, the party will splinter, with each faction having less influence during the turmoil of transition.

However, should voters recognize how supportive the current major political parties are of the corruption that is the current federal government, they may decide not to take on party challenges, and instead #AlterOrAbolish the monster that resides on the Potomac River.

The “Nigg-mo-cans”

What if I told you there was a single political affiliation:

    • Whose adherents represent every U.S. political party as well as independents,
    • Which successfully courts conservatives, liberals/progressives, and moderates,
    • That overcomes all color and ethnicity barriers,
    • That bridges social and economic divides,
    • That ignores differences in education and intellect,
    • That has operated since the 1960’s, with its origins in the nation’s earliest governance, and,
    • Though it impacts all U.S. politics, most Americans have neither name nor label for it…

Is that conceivable, seeing that Americans seem more “divided” now than at any time since the Civil Rights Era, or World War I, or even the Civil War? Not only is it conceivable, it has dominated U.S. politics over the last half-century, and promises to stay influential for generations to come. What is this affiliation?

This writer calls it, “Nigg-mo-can”, a political ideology and affiliation based on the current answer to a nation-old question: “What shall we do with the Negro?” Interestingly, its varied adherents – black, white, Democrat, Republican, conservative, liberal, moderate, etc. rarely agree, on anything; however, since 1964, they are united in their response to that ancient query.

The young nation’s first response to that question came while determining how best to divide influence in the National Legislature among the States:

    Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

    — United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3

By the Constitution’s drafting in 1787, American slavery had a decidedly black face. So, why did the Founders not simply end the above passage, “three fifths of all Negros”? Because there were also white (especially Irish), partly white, and Indian slaves. The word “Persons” accounted for the mix of people in bondage at that time. The Constitution addressed slavery as a class problem – which it was; the race angle was not a primary governance issue.

Nevertheless, when the Civil War ended slavery in the U.S., a leading question of the day was what to do with those newly freed. Regarding blacks, Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, offered this compelling response in 1865:

    What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. Gen. Banks was distressed with solicitude as to what he should do with the Negro. Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?”

    I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!

    If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot-box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, your interference is doing him a positive injury. Gen. Banks’ “preparation” is of a piece with this attempt to prop up the Negro. Let him fall if he cannot stand alone! If the Negro cannot live by the line of eternal justice, so beautifully pictured to you in the illustration used by Mr. Phillips, the fault will not be yours, it will be his who made the Negro, and established that line for his government. Let him live or die by that.

Not surprisingly, a beaten, but unbowed, South chose not to “do nothing” with its former black chattel. After readmission to the Union, white Democrats not only overturned black political advances in South Carolina and elsewhere; they worked to disenfranchise blacks and, by the early 20th century, virtually eliminated their electoral possibilities.

Yet, blacks demonstrated that the vote is not the “be-all and end-all” of political power. By 1900, some 30,000 trained black teachers were working in the South, and most blacks were literate. In 1909, the National Negro Committee, the precursor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, formed. In 1926, Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week, the forerunner to Black History Month. The Army formed the Tuskegee Airmen in 1941. 1955 launched the 386-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. These are a few of the significant accomplishments blacks made in pursuit of their rights as citizens, despite strong opposition…and without the vote. Those successes did not go unnoticed by Lyndon Baines Johnson, who came to Washington, D.C., in 1937 as a Congressman from Texas and, in 1955, began his second Senate term.

Johnson spent his first 20 years in Washington, D. C., opposing all federal civil rights legislation…then, as president, morphed into a Civil Rights champion…

Politicians who make 180⁰ position changes rarely do so for reasons they give the public. So, while it is possible Lyndon Johnson repented of his segregationist stance, it is also (more) likely Johnson, watching the building black momentum, changed, not his position, but his tactics, deciding, “If you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em”. In his 2013 book, Inside the White House, Ronald Kessler quotes then-president Johnson:

    “These Negroes, they’re getting pretty uppity these days and that’s a problem for us since they’ve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we’ve got to do something about this, we’ve got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.”

In 1964, Johnson announced his intent to visit, upon blacks, the very “mischief” and “positive injury” Frederick Douglass implored the nation to avoid, during the State of the Union address:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx8BMnteNfw[/youtube]

Johnson followed the War on Poverty declaration with the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Johnson also issued Executive Order 11246 in 1965, establishing “Affirmative Action” throughout the federal government’s Executive Branch. These are hailed among the greatest civil rights accomplishments in U.S. History…and it was a political master stroke.

In the space of four years, Johnson gave blacks Civil Rights “victories” that killed the momentum of their Civil Rights movement; by the end of the 1960’s, black civil rights was less about the societal changes which lifted all blacks, and more about the individual accomplishments of a few, of which all blacks could be proud…while changing nothing. So, Lyndon Johnson gave those “uppity” Negroes “a little something”, that proved “not enough to make a difference”.

Some dispute that, pointing out the benefit of securing the vote. Yes, but whom did the black vote benefit? Kessler offers this Lyndon Johnson quote, spoken to two governors aboard Air Force One, “I’ll have those n—–s voting Democratic for the next 200 years.” Fifty years later, Johnson’s words have Bible-prophet accuracy; blacks have given at least 74% of their votes to the Democrat Party since 1964, and are not 50 years better served for that loyalty.

Lyndon Johnson implemented the policies which make up the Nigg-mo-can response to the question, “What shall we do with the Negro?” By those policies, one can ascertain their beliefs:

    Nigg-mo-cans believe blacks deserve “a little something”, like the “benevolence” of unearned money; enough to quiet them down (in subsistence), not enough to make a(n economic achievement) difference. White Nigg-mo-cans seem to vote for dispensing these funds so they can either level, or avoid, a racism accusation. Dancing around the “racist” label allows whites, of all political stripes, to unite under the Nigg-mo-cans banner. For their part, black Nigg-mo-cans support nearly every conceivable government program for blacks as “payment for the struggle”. No Nigg-mo-cans, black or white, confront the black family devastation wrought by government programs, though they recognized the damaging links as early as 1965.

    Nigg-mo-cans believe blacks deserve “a little something”, like voting laws, which quiet them down by duping blacks into believing political power comes from ballot boxes – that others count – instead of united communities, accountable among themselves, actively pursuing their interests. They persist in telling blacks that the vote matters, despite a failed Detroit, an impotent and irrelevant Congressional Black Caucus, and an unhelpful Barack Obama.

    Nigg-mo-cans believe blacks deserve “a little something”, like civil rights and Affirmative Action laws, which quiet them down with assurances that others will not receive greater consideration than do they. Yet what difference do civil rights make, when that for which America’s blacks suffered are easily claimed by hispanics, homosexuals, and others, who neither waited as long, nor shed as much blood, to secure them? What difference Affirmative Action, the greatest beneficiary of which is white women, and which has actually worked against minorities in important situations.

Nigg-mo-cans believe, as did Lyndon Johnson, in giving blacks “a little something”. Unfortunately, few of them acknowledge it was never intended to make a difference. Seduced by the “compassion” of giving (what belongs to others), and of setting things right for blacks (by inflicting the wrongs done to blacks upon others), they intentionally blind themselves to the mischief they play with blacks, and the positive injury they cause. At their core, they either do not wish for blacks to stand unaided…or fear what blacks might accomplish without “help”. This perspective will guide their response to the question, “What shall we do with the Negro?”, until blacks either confront them, or the positive injuries become fatal.

In either case, the Nigg-mo-cans will then take their ideology and focus it on their next target people, re-branding themselves as the Hisp-mo-cans.

Bankruptcy, Thy Name Is Democrat

What do these U.S. locations have in common: Central Falls, RI; Detroit, MI; San Bernardino, CA; Mammoth Lakes, CA; Stockton, CA; Jefferson County, AL; Harrisburg, PA; and Boise County, ID? Well, each has filed for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy since 2010.

However, there is something else, shared with the financially troubled cities of Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Miami; also with Atlantic City and Camden, NJ, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

It is also common to the following states: California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

What these cities and states share, along with their financial challenges, is that the Democrat Party controls nearly every one of them; sometimes, it has for decades.

Consider Detroit, which on July 18, 2013, became the largest U.S. city ever to seek bankruptcy protection. No Republican has been mayor since January, 1962; the City Council has not had a Republican majority or plurality since the 1950’s. Democrats have run Detroit for more than a half century…into the ground.

As for the last Republican mayors in the other bankrupt locations:

    • Central Falls – 1930,
    • San Bernardino – 1993,
    • Stockton – only one since 1990,
    Birmingham, Alabama, Jefferson County’s seat – 1975,
    Harrisburg – 1982, and
    • Boise County, Idaho’s Commission appears majority Republican of late, bucking the trend.

Among the troubled, but not (yet?) bankrupt cities:

    Baltimore last elected a Republican mayor in 1963,
    Philadelphia – no GOP mayor in more than 60 years,
    Pittsburgh was last run by a Republican in 1934, and
    Miami has never had a Republican mayor.

Additionally:

    • Atlantic City’s last Republican mayor was black; James Usry ended his term in 1990,
    • A Republican last served as mayor of Camden, NJ from 1935 to 1936,
    Chicago’s last Republican mayor served in 1931, and for 43 of the last 82 years, the Democrat running the city was named Richard Daley, and
    Los Angeles boasts one Republican mayor since 1961.

There is more. In a report that identified 20 U.S cities that could go bankrupt after Detroit, at least 15 of them are Democrat-run. Of the 10 US cities with the highest percentages of residents living in poverty, Democrats have run them for decades. The point is hard to miss.

Turning attention to states with financial challenges:

    • California: 4 Democrat and 4 Republican governors since 1959. However, since 1992, Democrats have run the State Assembly for all but 4 years, and the State Senate for all but 2,

    • New York: Since 1958, 5 of 8 governors were Democrats. Since 1992, Republicans ran the Senate all but 4 years, but Democrats controlled the Assembly each year,

    • Illinois: Since 1991, 2 Democrat and 2 Republican governors; and Democrats controlled the State Senate for 12 of 22 years, and the House of Representatives for 20 of 22 years,

    • New Jersey: Since 1990 – 4 Democrat and 3 Republican, administrations. Since 1992, Republicans ran the Senate for 10 years, there were 2 years of shared control, and Democrats ran it for 10 years…the last 10 years; in the State House, Republican control for 10 years, followed by Democrat Control for the last 12, and

    • Massachusetts: Since Michael Dukakis’ 1991 retirement, there has been 1 Democrat governor, but Democrats kept majorities in both the Senate and the House.

To be “fair”, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan are troubled states under Republican control. Ohio has 24 governments and 6 school districts plagued by pension funding issues and an unwillingness to cut spending despite declining revenues. Pennsylvania has $47 Billion in unfunded pension liabilities and no political will to address the problem. Michigan halts between dealing with rising healthcare costs, or kicking that can down the road.

However, the political scales may not balance as much as some might believe; the policies at the root of these financial ills have a decidedly liberal Democrat aroma.

The problem of unfunded pension liabilities traces back to President Kennedy’s desire to grab union votes for Democrats. Both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and former AFL-CIO president George Meaney considered collective bargaining for public employees bad for taxpayers. However, when Kennedy saw that New York City Mayor Robert Wagner built a reliable Democrat voting bloc by granting collective-bargaining rights to the city’s public employees, he put his party’s good ahead of taxpayer benefit and issued an Executive Order in 1962, granting those rights to unionized federal employees. The practice spread across the nation. Now, governments have collectively bargained themselves into more than $4.5 Trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.

Problems with healthcare costs trace back to the 1965 origination of Medicare and Medicaid under President Lyndon Johnson. Government socialization of medical costs is now a financial disaster, with Medicare facing $38.6 Trillion in unfunded liabilities, according to its Board of Trustees. Also, Medicare heads for bankruptcy in 2016 or 2024, depending upon what is true about Obamacare.

It took 17 years for all 50 states to “voluntarily” participate in Medicaid, and 11 more for President Clinton to announce Medicaid was bankrupting them. Add the fact Obamacare makes Medicaid more costly for states, and that uninsured patients often have better medical outcomes than those using Medicaid, and one wonders how Medicare, Medicaid, or Obamacare benefit the nation. However, despite poorer health care and worsened state balance sheets, liberal Democrats use the programs to show themselves as “caring”.

More often than not in the U.S., when governments have financial trouble, Democrats are at the helm of government and, even when not in charge, policies originated and associated with Democrats cause the problems. For example, Democrats portray Social Security as an effective and successful program.

However, it is hard to imagine how a program, short nearly $10 Trillion over the next 75 years, and facing massive growth in the number of beneficiaries, meets any reasonable success criteria…until you consider how it delivers the senior vote to Democrats.

To their credit, Democrats convinced the nation that they care about the people, even as they devastate them financially. By the time Democrats finish showing their concern for people, no government anywhere is likely to have a dime to spend on them.

Perhaps it is time for a real change?

page 1 of 1

The World of Black Man Thinkin’
ARTICLE ARCHIVES
WDFP Radio Show Archives

Welcome , today is Monday, March 18, 2024